When You're Through Thinking Say Yes
by Illusive Writings
Summary: Set weeks after "XX". He can understand why she left and forgive her for it, but he wants to be at his wife's side. And he can't stop asking her to come home. Two shot.
1. Chapter 1

_Two shot based on sheer speculation and personal headcanons, contins spoilers for XY and XX, inspired by my evil iPod that reminded me of a song that gives me a lot of feels, written because of reasons. Thanks to Alex, awesome betareader and supporter when I feel I'm writing rubbish like right now._

* * *

Three weeks.

Twenty two nights. Alone. In what for the past two years has become their bed, and now was only his, again.

He still saw her every day but it was not the same. It wasn't the same, even if he knew it's not a definitive solution. He was sure of it, he could read it in her eyes every time she looked up at him; that glint in her eye, the smile about to break on her face and light her up like the fireworks on the Fourth of July, when she spotted him in the bullpen. Nothing had changed, she just… left.

He understood though, Kate wasn't the kind of person to act like that without a reason. It hurt, yes but… he understood why. He might have not in the beginning, blinded by the anger and the hurt, but now, he did.

Hunt called a couple of days after the… incident and explained some things. In an uncharacteristic moment of honesty, he also admitted he had been watching over them and had sent his wife… - yes, his wife he hadn't seen in nine months because of various reasons he didn't disclose - to save his daughter in law.

Beckett had messed up, big time. She was scared someone might retaliate against her and hurt him, or his mother and daughter.

In a convoluted way, it made sense, even to him.

Sighing, he slapped his laptop closed and dragged himself to his… their bed. He set himself down; trying to get comfortable on a mattress that for the past weeks felt strange to him then set his phone on the nightstand. As usual, he picked up the book he was reading and opened it where he had left it the night before.

About then minutes later, right on time, his phone buzzed.

He picked the call up without looking at the screen for the caller ID. He knew who was calling.

"Hey…"

"Hey…" came the twin reply, her voice soft and quiet. "You didn't come to the precinct today."

She sounded sad, almost resigned. And… tired maybe? "Had a case. Woman thought husband cheated. Turned out he was a gambler. Open and closed by early afternoon," he quickly explained. "Anything nice?"

He heard a sigh. "Dull day. Paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork. Missed you."

For the first time that day, Castle smiled. "Missed you too… Sorry you had a bad day."

"It wasn't bad, just… boring. What have you done after you closed the case?"

He scratched his head as he retraced his steps for the last afternoon. "I came home, ate something… wrote half a chapter, played a bit with the XBox and the wrote again. I was reading when you called."

"What did you play?"

He so wished that small talk would turn into something more serious, something about them and not their days, but it was something. It was a way to be close even if they weren't.

"Metal Gear…" he grumbled.

"Oh come on I thought we were going to play that together!"

"We would, if you came home." Trying to force the conversation to something useful couldn't hurt more than it already did, after all.

"Castle… I…" She fell silent, her unspoken words hanging between them like the proverbial elephant in the room and she sighed. "Give me time."

He could give her all the time in the world, but no way in hell or heaven he'll let her go like that. She had asked for forgiveness, tears streaming down her cheeks as she still winced from the gash on her side, and he was ready to give it to her, but only if she came home. Together they could face everything, they had faced so much in the past, they could face even more.

They could face this.

"I know, Kate, it's just… come home, please! The loft is empty without you!"

Silence, again. Sighing, Castle let his head fall on the pillow and his free hand clenched in a fist. Then he heard a subdued sniffle, a noise she was desperately trying to stop crying.

Just like every night. He hated to see, or hear, her crying. He didn't want that, not again. Not tonight. One day he'll call her out for all the shit she was putting up, but she was still too fragile, too scared to handle it.

Man, he wasn't sure he was going to handle it at that moment. It's still too raw, no scar to cover their freshly scraped, too vulnerable hearts.

"Kate… I'm sorry. I'm being an ass and… It's just that I miss you. I just want you back, where you should be."

"Too dangerous. I don't want any of you to get hurt, or worse, because I fucked up. Too many people already died, I'm radioactive."

She sounded so stern and resolute… he could picture her, back in her old apartment, sharing the space with her cousin Sofia. She had told him she was camped in the guest room, the one that used to be her study, and that Sophie had furnished it in such bright colors that it almost gave her headaches. In his mind's eye, he saw her curled up on her side, phone beside the pillow on speakerphone - he could hear the shower running in the background, and a tune he couldn't decipher, probably Sofia taking a shower before bed - trying to avoid looking at the flurry of colors around her. He knew she preferred lighter shades in the bedroom; she wasn't one for bright red duvets and neon yellow curtains. And from how she had described it, the bedroom was just like that.

It warmed his heart, the mental image of his wife in such a different ambient than her natural habitat, trying to maintain control over something that was threatening to drag her down a bottomless rabbit hole.

Now that was a familiar ambience for her, though he knew she didn't want to slip again into that dark place.

But that dark was apparently more welcoming and comfortable than the loft. Her home. _Their_ home. A place where they were planning to raise a family together.

Fuck…

"You're not radioactive Kate… just…" he heaved a deep breath, trying to suppress the sudden need to cry and sob, beg her to come home because he can't spend another night without her. He can't stand the cold of her side of the bed, the empty nightstand, without her charger and the book she was reading. He could hardly take a shower without feeling his heart breaking in a million pieces each time he saw her body wash, shampoo and conditioner. "Will you come home?" he asked, trying not to break down, just like he asked every night since she had left, be it on the phone or via text.

He heard a sob on the line, then another. Damn, he had made her cry, again.

"Just let me think this through."

Castle drew a deep breath. "Goodnight Kate. Sleep well."

"Goodnight Rick… I love you."

He closed the call and set the phone on the nightstand, then wiped the tears from his face. He took a long moment to compose himself, find enough balance to feel tired enough to fall asleep.

No such luck.

Grunting in frustration and barely contained anger, he grabbed the phone and quickly typed a text.

 _When you're through thinking, say yes._


	2. Chapter 2

Thank God Sofia had kept the hook on the ceiling, for the punching bag. And that she hadn't thrown away the bag itself, but kept it neatly tucked in the back of the supply closet, in case she needed to vent out.

After the first couple of days of self-inflicted exile from her home, from Castle and his family, she had felt the physical need to punch something, but her new role as Captain wouldn't allow enough free time to benefit from the precinct gym and related punching sack.

So, the old black one was taken out of its protective bag and hung on its hook and the sound of brutal and relentless punches and kicks filled her old apartment.

She hit until her knuckles burned despite the thick gloves and her shins ached beneath the padded protections. Each night when she came home from the precinct after having juggled paperwork, hostile phone calls from 1PP and the detectives, she donned some comfortable workout clothes, shin pads and gloves and then just vented it out.

She beat until she couldn't stand up straight anymore. More than once she collapsed against it, totally worn out, sweat dripping from her brow and tears streaming on her cheeks. Out of breath and taken over by grief and fear, she cried until she calmed down, just enough to be functional and drag herself to the shower.

Sofia usually let her go through her evening coping mechanism without a word, providing a glass of red wine and some sympathy, along with a delicious home cooked meal every night, but that night, six weeks after taking her in, Kate noticed Sofia was late. She was usually home by six, her job had stable work hours, but it was nearly nine and there was still no trace of her.

Strange.

It was distracting. If her cousin's presence had distracted her the first couple of days, Kate got used to her silent vigil of her daily break down and stopped caring about that, but she hadn't realized how quickly she had got accustomed to it.

She kind of missed her.

She grounded her, even if they had never spoken about what had prompted her sudden appearance at her door that night, more than a month before. It was the proverbial elephant in the room, but Sofia, unlike Castle, was a reserved person and never forced anyone to talk if they didn't want to. Just what she needed; a sympathetic smile and compassion.

Kate had just gotten out of the shower, her hair still dripping on the NYPD sweatshirt she was wearing, when Sofia burst into the apartment, eyes flaming with rage to the point that if looks could kill, she'd need a license for her face.

She closed the door with her shoulder and kicked her shoes off, then launched her handbag on the couch and placed the plastic takeaway bag on the countertop of the kitchen. "Sorry," she said, a little snappy, as she took off her jacket. "Boss was a bitch all day and made me stay after hours. Got Thai, tequila and lime, since we both don't work tomorrow."

Kate squinted her eyes. "Not that I mind, but… Thai and tequila?"

Sofia shrugged. "Thai booze sucks. I wanted Mexican, but the usual place was closed for some reason. Hungry?"

"And tired," replied Kate, sitting in front of her cousin.

"Worthy adversary?"

She rubbed the skin of her knuckles, still reddened and a little chafed, before answering. "Same old." Sofia handed her a styrofoam container and a pair of chopsticks. "What happened with your boss?"

"She's a bitch, plain and simple. According to her, not warning your employees about long meetings until one hour before said meeting starts is the norm. Apparently, the laws regarding safety on the workplace have been updated, again, thus we needed to be aware of such updates. That are simply common sense made rules!"

"You work in a chem lab, I guess you need to know how to deal with that stuff."

That remark only earned her a scornful look. Her cousin Sofia was a highly specialized laboratory technician for an important bio-medical industry, working the R&D department, she took her job very seriously and, clearly, didn't like to be considered an idiot.

"Yeah, as if I haven't spent half of my life wearing a lab coat, right? I know how to handle concentrated sulfuric acid and how to properly dispose of organic solvents, I don't need an eight hours long lecture to know that I have to wear gloves while doing that!" she burst, anger spilling from every word she said. "It's embarrassing!"

Kate perfectly understood the feeling. It wasn't different from all the courses and lectures cops were forced to attend each year, since they were often a waste of time. Every cop learns how to clean a gun, a Colt 1911 .45 doesn't change cleaning method from one year to another and cleaning it isn't much different from cleaning a Glock or a Beretta. Yet they were forced to attend a seminar on maintenance of the service piece every two years.

"Sorry…" she apologized.

Sofia waved her off as she chewed on her stir-fried chicken. "Don't worry… Gave me enough time to write the report for that day and send it away before my deadline came. It wasn't that bad in the end, the chair was comfortable. How was your day?"

"Not too bad, three cases from the backlog closed, two open and closed, three new cases and one ruled as suicide. Lots of paperwork to sign, people at 1PP that don't like how I work… I've been Captain for six weeks and I already hate it."

Sofia chuckled. "You hate being Captain, or you hate being here?"

There it was. After six weeks, there was the question Kate had been dreading. Time to be somewhat sincere, to a certain degree.

"I made a mess, in DC. I uncovered something, or someone thinks I did, very big, without knowing it. Big enough that if I dig in I could endanger everyone around me."

"Oh wow thank you Kate, very nice of you!"

"Do you intend to help me wade into unknown, deadly waters or you prefer to keep up doing your thing at the lab?"

Sofia smiled. "I'm quite happy with my lab coat and protective eyewear, thank you."

"Then if I don't tell you anything and you don't help me except for giving me a place to stay, you're safe. Problem is, Castle would never let go, he'd push and prod along with me, even harder than me, probably. If…" she paused for a moment, to think about what and how tell her so she could understand her predicament without being threatened by what she knew, "I left not only because I wanted to protect him, Martha, and Alexis from whoever is behind this whole thing, but also because I feared that he'd push me to dig. It took me year to drag myself out of that dark wood of my mother's murder… I don't want to walk that path again but…"

"But you're just like your mom, always seeking justice," said Sofia, seemingly lost in her thoughts. "It's like a drug, you can't help but dig, like you did with your mom's murder."

Kate nodded. "Yes," she replied with a sigh. "Yes, it's like a drug. It's an obsession I've lived with for so many years, until it nearly killed me a second time. The guy that shot me was ordered to kill me again a year later, around the time Castle and I found out about Bracken's involvement."

"So you knew it was him way before you arrested him?"

Again, she nodded. "Yes… but at the time we found out, we didn't have enough hard evidence to apprehend him, so I made a bargain. I'd leave him alone if he stopped sending people trying to kill me or Castle or any of our friends and family. I even saved his life from an assassination attempt some month later, in order to show him my good will to keep honoring my part of the bargain."

"That was very honorable of you," commented Sofia.

"I was tempted… to let him die. Leave him the line of explosion, he might have survived or not, I don't know… It was him that tried to kill me again, about a year ago. He was weeding out all the loose ends that could stop him on his way to presidency. That's when we moved, found the last piece of evidence and arrested him on live TV."

"Oh, I remember all too well… it was all over the news, I saw it on the CNN at lunch with some colleagues and I couldn't help but scream _that's my cousin, that's the son of a bitch that killed my aunt!_ And my boss nearly fired me."

The scene tore a smile from Kate, though brief and tired. "I think Dad mentioned it, some time ago."

"Speaking of your dad, do you think your fear of yielding to your obsession comes from the fact that he's an addict?"

"We're both addicts, to different things though. I'm also prone to self-destruction, though not in the canonical way," she explained. "The first time I pulled away, that I stopped looking… it was because I realized I got nothing and I was hurting myself. So I solved other people's homicide, and it worked until Castle found something, and you know what happened. But now… I don't have a lead but I know there's something, that I saw something that killed my old squad back in DC, that killed Bracken and nearly got me killed again. But what?" She paused, ate the last bite of her Pad Thai and discarded the container and the chopsticks. "I don't know what I would be facing and it's… it's like booze for an alcoholic, and no matter how hard I try to stay away from it, Castle will make me want to investigate and he will want to help me, and I can't allow him. It's too dangerous."

Speaking of booze, Sofia had finished her dinner and was cutting the lime. Salt was already on the table and the bottle of Cuervo sat beside it.

"So you ran away from temptation?" Sofia's voice dripped with disbelief and incredulity. "You ran away from your husband because you don't _know_? You really thought that would deter him from trying to get you back, or even find out why you left? Damn, if half of what you told me about him is true, he's already working on finding out why you're here and not home!"

Kate poured herself a shot of tequila and downed it. "Why do you think I ran away? I'm the only one that knows something is going on, unless someone I can't speak about has told him him, which I highly doubt it happened." It wasn't true, she was sure someone, be it Hunt or his wife, had actually explained him at least a minimum of what was going on and why she had left. No other way he'd change his demeanor towards her in such a short time. After the dead guy at Hudson University, the way he acted around her had completely flipped. "If I'm not there, it's better for both of us."

"That's bullshit and you know it." Sofia took the tequila and poured her own shot. "Kate… you're wasting your time. You call him every night, and don't tell me you don't because I can hear you crying, you still see him almost every day at work, it's crazy!"

"It's not crazy!" she retorted. "At least this way I know he's fine, that everyone's fine!" Except for herself. Vikram kept asking her if she wanted him to stop, if she was having second thoughts and wanted to call the whole thing off. Truth was, she wanted to. She desperately wanted everything to be over, to say goodbye to Sofia and go back to her husband, to the life she had fought so hard to have. However, each day that passed, he uncovered something more. The bigger picture was slowly, agonizingly so, becoming visible. They weren't that far, they just needed some more time.

Meanwhile, she could pretend everything looked good, that she was doing fine and that she wasn't in mortal danger every time Vikram uncovered something more. How long would it take them to find who was behind LocSat and how long before they uncovered what they had been doing?

Kate jumped a little on her stool, startled when Sofia spoke again, even more vehemently this time.

"How about you? You're not fine! One day or another you're going to break your hand against the sack, you cry every night, you barely sleep and you have panic attacks too. And don't even try to convince me you're just peachy because I can hear you. All of this…" she weaved her hands around them. "...is just destroying you. Look, last year when we met after you got married so you could give me the keys of the apartment, it was the first time I saw you in years and you were so different from before I left. Back then, after your mom was murdered, you were a chock of wood, the proverbial broomstick up your ass type of per person."

Kate laughed, a grim-filled laugh, knowing all too well what she meant. Sofia had left New York ten years before for a long time research project in France that had lasted until last fall, and the last time they had seen each other, Kate had just been appointed detective and, well, that hadn't been her highest point in life. Grief still clutched her heart and guided her, she wasn't the funniest person to be around.

"But last year, you were another person. You were yourself, happy and carefree. Your eyes shined when you spoke of Castle, when you introduced him to me. That was the first time I saw my cousin, and not some freaky walking piece of ice! And now?" Sofia took a pause to take another shot. That short moment of silence was more than enough for Kate to feel like someone had dropped a bucket of tar over her, with sorrow engulfing her like a second, thick skin. "Now you're back to that place where I left you before I went to France. You try to look all stoic and shit, but deep down, you're a wreck."

She paused again, probably to allow Kate the chance to reply, a reply that never came. "Do you really think this is the right thing to do? Running away from the man that, allow me, saved you from yourself? Kate, you two have been through so much… you can get through this too. I know this is your way to cope, you run away, you've always done that ever since we were children. But when you said that _I do_ in front of the judge and signed that paper, you vowed to be Castle's wife through and through, for better or for worse. This is the worse. By running away, even if it is to protect you both, not only you're hurting him and yourself, but the longer you stay away, the longer you keep up with this stupid sham, the longer you hurt relationship. Your marriage is at stake, because he might be the most patient man in the world, but the more you stay away, once you come home and tell him that this big, dangerous thing is gone, the harder it will be for him to completely trust you again."

"He trusts me Sofia, he tells me pretty much every day."

"Now, that you've been gone for only six weeks. But when these six weeks become six months? A year? I can keep you here, give you a place to stay, but what about him? Are you sure you can keep being around your husband every day, keep him at distance and return here, to that cold, lonely bed? Aren't you even missing sex at this point?"

Kate suddenly felt the need to call Vikram and call everything off. Sofia was right. About everything. Even not knowing squat about what was going on, except for such minor things that had been on the news for weeks after Bracken's arrest, she had found the heart of the problem with surgical precision. Castle was patient, but how long could he be? How long could he wait?

How long could _she_ wait?

What higher power had given her the right to put both their lives on hold? Had she become such a scared little thing that at the very sight of peril she'd cower and run away?

"And don't think you're the only one to blame in this mess!" snapped Sofia. "Because if I were him, I'd haul you over my shoulder and bring you home by force. He's big enough to do it. He should fight more, but I guess it's not in his character, right? He's the kind of man that up until things don't get really nasty he's calm and composed."

"You should have studied psychology, not biochemistry."

Sofia shrugged. "I'm just a good observer. It's my job after all, to wait and observe. And I've observed you for a few days now. You're on the path of self-destruction and that punching bag won't be enough to let you vent it all out. You're an uncontrolled exothermic reaction in a sealed system. One day, sooner or later, something will crack and you'll blow up in a million of tiny pieces. Now, listen to me; you can still prevent this. I know you well enough to be certain that you are investigating. You're too much of Aunt Jo's daughter to let it go so don't try to feed me your lies about running away from temptation, and this alone is a lot of stress. Add the emotional turmoil of being away from the person you love and that for years has been your support… you're doomed. Now listen to someone that has seen more than one piece of Pyrex explode in front of her eyes because she messed up with dosages and obtained a stronger reaction than expected; go home. Even if you still want to keep him in the dark about the underground investigation, go home! You're on a quest for justice, but if you burnout before you obtain justice, than this is absolutely useless. You can't do any good if you end up dead."

She sighed. Between the case she and Vikram were investigating on the side, the actual workload of being an on-the-field type of Captain and the emotional turmoil she was going through, she barely knew what to think, let alone how to reply to Sofia. Her words had punched a very tender spot in her, she had picked all the right strings, those connected to her anguish and pain. And it hurt. For the past few weeks she had spent a great portion of her energies denying, telling herself that she was doing the right thing, that it would soon be over and that Castle would wait for her.

But could _she_ wait until it was over?

She highly doubted it, most of all because Sofia was more than right, Castle was her pressure release valve. No matter what happened, he was there for her, even when she didn't want him to be. Even when his presence, be it literal or just metaphorical, like for their nightly phone calls or texting, hurt and made her cry in grief and frustration, being with him made her feel better.

"Listen, I know I'm not the best person in the world for relationship advice, but if there's something I learned after that on-and-off thing I had with that Italian guy back when I was in France, is that things like this… the request for time, the hiding, the secrets… they don't last. Either way, you still have time. You're not broken yet, just a little bent. But there's only so much tension even the strongest relationship can withstand. You can go on for a little longer, but I doubt you'll resist too long. Too bad it's very hard to see when too long is too long. Now, push aside this big clandestine investigation, push aside the long term and think about the immediate future. Would you risk everything you fought so hard to achieve because you don't know what could happen? Do you really want to live in a nuclear fallout shelter, alone, for the rest of your life? Or you prefer to get your ass off that stool, gather your things and sleep in your bed, knowing that, for now, things can get better and if they get worse, you'll have someone to help you fix them?"

Before she could answer, Kate's phone beeped. She expected it to be a text from Castle, but in reality, it came from Vikram.

 _Done. Bomb ready. Can be dropped anytime._

Maybe she would have been able to sleep in their bed that night.

* * *

 _You know what happened? This thing got longer than a planned and is now a two-shot + epilogue. Bear with me and my nonsense please._


	3. Epilogue

A flashing notification from the news app on his phone woke him up in the middle of the night. A quasi-terrorist organization had been uncovered. In his drowsy state, barely awake in the dark and emptiness of his room, Castle didn't even bother to read the whole thing. He shut the app and threw the phone on the nightstand, screen facing downward, so it wouldn't bother him again.

But the full extent of the case, how deep it went and who was involved had yet to be revealed.

Next morning, while he was patiently waiting for the coffee to brew, he received a text from Ryan. _Turn on the news, now!_

Lazily, he did. It came like a blast.

Evidence that connected the splinter group for kidnappings, various murders, shady dealings and more than one cover-up for a misbehaving politician who couldn't afford to lose their power for one or two bad habits, and a good bunch of arrests were being executed as the anchorwoman spoke.

A whistleblower had released a list of involved parties, people who bore some amount of weight in their society and politics that had hired those guys to clean the mess they had left behind and there were some very important names on that list. William Bracken was one of them.

And as the pieces of the messy puzzle that the last few weeks came from, formed a neat picture in his head, the news station sent a short video of one of those arrests as it took place hours before.

The man was being dragged down a staircase into a police car by none other than his wife.

Castle couldn't help but smile, as he focused on her figure for the fleeting moment she appeared on the flat screen. She had made it! Whatever Hunt had tried to _explain_ , in his convoluted way, what she was trying to do, she had made it. Whatever she had been chasing for the past six weeks was now on national news, exposed and on its way for public shaming and the course of justice.

But that also meant she could come home, right? Hunt had told him, she wasn't running away for some obscure reason, she had her rights to be scared, that she had crossed someone very dangerous that was out for her blood. Or her family's, he had added during that brief call that had turned into an eye-opener for him.

He blindly reached for his phone and tried to call her, but it went straight to voicemail. He then typed a quick message. _Just saw the news. Are you alright?_

The reply came about half an hour later, while he was getting ready to go to the precinct. _A little banged up, but alright._ Then came a second one. _Almost done_.

That almost chilled the blood in his veins, frozen solid. He didn't want _almost,_ he wanted _now._ He wanted certainty, he wanted his wife back for fuck's sake!

Before he went out though, he called Esposito. He didn't pick up. Then he tried his desk, still no answer. He tried with Ryan cell, and he finally picked up. Underneath his tired voice, he could hear what he thought was a tornado was passing through the building. The homicide division sounded like a crowded mall with people running up and down, answering phone calls, hastily carrying warrants just signed by judges to eager detectives, uniforms taking care of suspects and so on. The usual bustle of every other day, only with the added workload of such a big case that had just been cracked and was sending in more suspects and certain culprits than the cells could hold.

"Ryan, what's going on?" he asked, slightly worried.

He heard something he had never heard from Kevin Ryan, the voice of a man ready to give up everything and dedicate himself to some serious table flipping. "You mean, what's _not_ going on. Everything blew up, Beckett and the analyst from DC uncovered the proverbial Pandora's box and it was a Czar Bomb ready to explode. We're swamped, trying to keep up with the usual workload and this. And we're not alone, half of New York's precincts are in the same conditions, not to mention Washington."

He was exhausted and not afraid to show it, Castle could hear it in his voice. "But… the news spoke of a CIA splinter group, is it really so big?"

"It's not only the splinter group, I wish it was only the splinter group. It's the insane amount of connection they had, from dirty cops to senators, and judges of the Supreme Court. They had ties everywhere, with everyone. They operated here, outside, killed, stole and kidnapped. And they controlled a huge flow of drugs, mostly heroin, and distributed them through all the United States. They are apparently responsible for an insane amount of terrorists attacks on US soil and they framed other people for them… it's them that kidnapped you and chased Beckett in September. They have ties with the terrorist attack you helped stop last year, even if they weren't involved. One of their own covered Bracken and Simmons with their shady dealings, they're…" he paused, and Castle heard the crackling sound of torn and crumpled paper on the line, then a sigh that sounded like distilled exasperation. "It's big. And we don't know how long it will take to actually go through everything and everyone Vikram and Beckett have found."

"Wow…" Castle didn't know what to say, except for that. He had the feeling that, in the next few days, he'd find out that Hunt had downplayed it, when he had described what Kate had been fighting against. The reason she left, still quite foggy to his opinion, suddenly became very clear in his mind. "Where's Kate? I tried to call her but it went straight to voicemail."

"From what I know, she's at 1PP. She might have uncovered something extremely important regarding the safety of many people, but she hid it and sort of broke the law to do so."

Castle sighed in relief. That _almost_ over probably meant that she was dealing with the Commissioner or whoever was in charge. "How long do you think they'll keep her?"

Ryan sighed, too. "No idea. I wish she'd just come here and tell us what to do because we're neck deep in troubles. Espo's out with the SWAT team to arrest someone and she left me in charge of the Precinct and I don't know what to do."

"Do you need me to come in?" he proposed. "I can help, even if you only need a comic relief."

"No, Castle, this is not the regular mess we're talking about. We don't know what to do, for real." Castle could almost see Ryan running his hand through his hair and pulling at it, frustrated out of his mind. "Stay home. Wait for her."

That was the problem. He couldn't wait anymore. Now that he knew what she was looking for had been found and exposed, he wanted his wife back. No ifs, ands or buts.

"I promise I won't intrude, I'll stay in the break room, wait for her."

"Castle, really… for your own sake, stay home. We're losing our minds here, this is not the typical fullmoon thing here, when the lunatics come out and play. Unless you ardently desire to see each one of us crack under the pressure, stay home."

In the end, hearing Ryan begging convinced him to stay put at the loft. "Alright. I'll stay here. Just… call me if you need anything. And by anything, I mean it. Call even if you only need someone to come in and start making coffees." He stopped for a second and swallowed the heavy lump that was forming in his throat. "Or if you see her."

"Will do. Keep an eye on the news, apparently they received the same material we're basing our arrests on so you might learn something more."

After that, Castle never heard from Ryan or Esposito for that day, except for a couple of texts updating him about Kate's whereabouts. He spent the day, together with Alexis, watching the news and keeping a close eye to websites and Twitter feeds, as a new hashtag dedicated to the scandal had quickly started circulating and both people and journalists were using to comment the news. Her name never popped up though. Either the NYPD was keeping everything under the radar, and he could picture the equivalent of Zach Hamner wearing himself out to keep her name from being revealed, or the press didn't care.

Either way, he was happy about it.

Kate sent a couple of texts through the morning, confirming that she was being held at 1PP for an unofficial praise but official and, unfortunately, rather heavy scold. Even though Gates had come promptly to her side to defend her like a stern knight in a spotless armor, her bosses weren't happy about the fact that she had broken countless rules and laws to obtain that result. Just like Ryan had said.

 _Everything will be fine, just wait for me._

Oh, he could wait, but he was losing his mind too. Not even Hunt's quick phonecall served to calm him. He was fretless and agitated, and nothing could help.

"What if they fire her?" His voice sounded alien to him, it quivered and faltered just like Ryan's that morning. Now he understood why he had asked him to stay home. The Detective knew he couldn't handle the tension, not after so much time. "What if someone they didn't find and expose calls a hit on her?" he asked aloud as they watched the CNN.

Alexis averted her eyes from the TV and looked at him. "Hunt said he's going to clean up the rest, right?"

He groaned. "Do you trust him?"

At that, his daughter nodded. "He said he would come for me, and he did. He said things were going to be resolved quite quickly, and after all, six weeks is way less than what I had thought. When he asked for your help last year, he said he'd never bother us again and he never did. Up to know, he's always kept his part of the bargain, I don't see a reason not to trust him."

"For all we know, he could be their boss."

"Then he could have killed Kate a long time ago. But he called you to explain what was going on, even though he didn't give you the details. To keep you, us, even Kate, safe."

She was right. Every time they had crossed paths with Hunt, he had always been correct, in his own way. Alexis was always the voice of reason in that family. He so loved his daughter and her maturity. She kept him grounded like nothing else in the world. Only Kate could have the same effect on him.

He sighed and sagged back on the couch. "Right… you're right. What do we do now?"

She turned back towards the TV. "We wait."

* * *

Waiting wore him out.

Later that night, when the almost continuous flux of information came to a halt when the FBI closed the tap on them, or so Ryan had told him. The feds had taken over that afternoon, when they had enough time to organize and coordinate multiple squads across the country and the exhausted NYPD detectives were free to go home.

But the Feds had seized Kate and Vikram and, up to the last update he had received from Ryan, they were locked at 1PP to be questioned about their little underground operation. She had come in right after lunch, with two IA detectives at her side, to retrieve her personal iPad then she had been whisked away before she could even greet her people.

So, after that, no news had come through. No one knew when, or if, they'd be released.

He called Sofia, to inform her that Kate might have not come home that night, and she had told him that she had suspected it the moment she had launched out of the apartment after she had received a text message, the night before.

Around midnight, Alexis had gone upstairs to sleep, but he had decided to stay awake, to see if there were more updates during the night. He gathered his laptop and set himself on the leather couch in his study and opened Twitter and all the major newspapers websites, and kept refreshing them obsessively.

Meanwhile, he wrote the possible beginning of the new Nikki Heat novel. But his quest failed miserably as weariness took over him. He fell asleep like a rock, probably a bit after two AM.

He woke up hours later, when something gently touched his cheek.

Drowsily, he opened one eye to a slit. All he saw was Kate, a tired but happy smile brightening her face as she knelt beside the couch. Her fingers were now toying with his ear, tugging the earlobe. "Hey sleepyhead…" she whispered, trying to wake him up.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, not completely sure she was real and not a figment of his overly taxed, desperate imagination.

"I'm through thinking…"

He opened the other eye and looked up at her, suddenly awake and very serious as her words reminded him the text message he had sent weeks ago, in a fit of anguish. "So? What do you say?"

"Yes."

* * *

 _Quick friendly reminder: opinions expressed by characters not always - better, rarely - represent the author's own opinions. Just for future reference._


End file.
